Context
Welcome to the Web site of Dan Duling: playwright, screenwriter, content and discontent provider for hire. This site has been designed to provide you with an introduction to his collected works for the theater, for television, film and interactive media.
Feel free to browse through synopses and excerpts from his collected plays and screenplays. Dialogue and dark comedy are Duling’s stock in trade. He continues to live within the community of art carnies putting down shallow roots in the unstable but very fertile soil of Echo Park, the creative nexus of bohemian Los Angeles.
Welcome. And watch your step...
View From The Back Row
Duling’s plays have been produced throughout the United States. “Monstrosity” received staged readings in 2011 at the Odyssey Theatre in West Los Angeles and the Skylight Theatre in Los Feliz as part of the Inkubator reading series by the Katselas Theatre Company. Before that, “Monstrosity” also received a staged reading at Innovation Theatre Works in Bend, Oregon. The search for theatres interested in producing “Monstrosity” continues in earnest in Los Angeles, Chicago and New York.
Acceptance for short residencies at the Whiteley Center (a creative retreat for writing and research on approved projects) on San Juan Island in Washington State have been instrumental in the development and completion of “Monstrosity,” “Tesla” (his "radio play for the stage" about the eccentric inventor) and “Art Carnies,” his new novel-in-progress about life on the fringes of the music and arts scenes in and around the Silverlake/Echo Park areas of Los Angeles.
Earlier, “A Dream of Frankenstein” was given a staged reading at Artists Repertory Theater in Portland, Oregon. Before that, “Hard Road Home” had a run at the Sanford Meisner Theater Center in North Hollywood, California. An earlier production at L.A.'s Theater Shed was the recipient of three Drama-Logue Awards, including Outstanding Production.
Back in 1997, “Stranglehold” was produced in Los Angeles at Glaxa Studios Theater. Prior to that production, “Stranglehold” had received numerous staged readings and was the recipient of both the Oregon Playwrights Award and Seattle’s Allen Clark Memorial Playwriting Award.
Duling received his Ph.D. in Drama from the University of Texas before moving to Los Angeles. He’s also an actor, director and longstanding member of Equity and SAG. His theater criticism has been published in the L.A. Times, L.A. Herald-Examiner and L.A. Weekly.
In 1997, his feature screenplay “Last Lives” was produced by Promark Films and premiered on the Sci-Fi Channel. It's available on video and shows on the Sci-Fi Channel three or four times a year. There’s more, but that’s a start...
